Defence Of Insanity

The defence for insanity comes to play when an individual is unable to detect the wrongfulness or rightness of his action. This defence is an affirmative defence alleging that a mental disorder caused the accused to commit the crime. A successful in sanity defence results not in acquittal, but in a special verdict “not guilty by reason of insanity”, see state V. Adams (1966) I All Nyene. This defence reflects Law reports Vol. 3 the society’s belief that the law should not punish defendants who are mentally incapable of controlling their conduct. That is to say that if a person was not at the time of his unlawful act, mentally so disordered, that it will be unreasonable to impute the guilt on him, he ought not to be held liable for conviction and punishment.
To succeed on the defence of insanity in Nigeria, three requisite capacities must be considered,
1. The capacity to understand what he is doing
2. Capacity to control his actions
3. Capacity to know that he should not do the act or make the omission. (See section 28 of the criminal code).
Also in Foluso Oladele V. State (1993) 1 SCNJ 60. It was stated that to establish the defence of insanity, the following facts must be considered,
I Evidence as to the past history of the accused person.
Ii Evidence as to the conduct of the accused immediately preceding the commission or omission of the offence.
Iii Evidence of prison officials who have custody of the accused person before and during his trial.
Iv Evidence of medical officials who examined the accused.
V Evidence of relatives about the general behavior of the accused and such other facts which will help the trial court come to conclusion that the burden of proof placed by law on the defence has been discharged.
To prove a defence of insanity, the defendant who claims that he was insane at the time of the crime must show that he was either suffering from a disease which damaged the functioning of the mind and led to defect of reasoning that prevented him from understanding what he was doing. This was the plea of one Edet Okon, who was found guilty of murder of a Lagos State High Court and was sentenced to death by hanging after stabbing his wife to death. Edet appealed his sentence. The Court of Appeal in a unanimous judgement held that the Appeal No. CALL/553/10 lacked merit and dismissed it. The court held that the burden of proving insanity rested on the appellant. The appellant the court added failed to discharge the burden on him to prove that he was insane at the time of committing the offence.
The court held that, medical evidence is sine qua non for proof of insanity, the justices of the court of appeal said there was no medical evidence to prove the state of the mind of the appellant at the point of the offence. Okon’s evidence that he suffered typhoid and suddenly woke up at night and engaged in a struggle with his wife, the court held was rightly rejected by the lawer court. The Court of Appeal upheld the judgement of the lower court.
In most cases when the defence of insanity succeeds, the prosecution and the defence agree to the plea of “not guilty by reason of insanity”. And in this circumstance the proper order to be made is remand in safe custody (in most cases psychiatric institution), pending the pleasure of the president or governor. The essence of this committal order is that the accused person do not go scot free. The law requires that he should be kept away to prevent further danger to the society.

Nkechi Bright-Ewere